Time and Intimacy: A New Science of Personal Relationships(LEA's Series on Personal Relationships)

There is a mysterious connection between our experiences of intimacy--of love, the longing to feel connected, and sexual embrace--and the human sense of time--eternity, impermanence, and rhythm. In this critical analysis of the time-intimacy equation, Bennett shows how the scientific study of personal relationships can address this mystery. As a study of transpersonal science, this book points to the possible evolution of intimacy and of our consciousness of time, and how the two evolutionary paths weave together. Dr. Bennett draws from a wide array of resources to advance and marry two compelling themes: first, the social and clinical science of personal relationships should integrate the spiritual or transpersonal dimension of intimacy, and second, science can contribute to lay understandings by describing the richly temporal aspects of relationships. In blending popular literature, transpersonal psychology, and scientific research and theory, this work also attempts to address the lack of dialogue between academics who study personal intimacy and those writers in the popular press who give advice and guidelines for building intimacy. Time and Intimacy is written for a broad audience, intended for those with a general interest in relationships, as well as for students, counselors, and psychologists. It can be used as a text in courses on personal relationships, as well as to supplement courses in humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology, interpersonal communication, relationships, marital and family counseling, human relations, and related areas. Because it advances an interdisciplinary understanding of personal relationships, this book is certain to challenge prevailing views about the meaning of intimacy in both the academic and popular literatures.

Table of Contents:
Contents: S. Duck, Series Editor's Foreword. Preface. Introduction. Intimacy as a Journey Through This Text: Time and Change From Transcription to Transcendence. Unfolding in Time: Intimacy Across Situations. The Forces of Time: The Process of Intimacy. Time, Addiction, and Intimacy: Scripts, Archescripts, & Holoscripts. Temporal Context in Love and Science: The Weave of Temporal Sensitivity. In Search of the Temporal in Personal Relationship Research: From Temporal Initiative to Temporal Scale. Theories of Personal Relationships and the Contextual Model. Summary and Integration: Toward a Transpersonal Science. Appendix.

Review :
"Joel Bennett's Time and Intimacy talks about intimacy in a way that recreates the feeling of intimacy, and recapitulates his vision of an intimate interaction through the structure of the book itself. Just as intimate interactions provide a sense of transcending time even as they can only be understood within a temporary trajectory, Bennett's prose, by refusing linearity and traditional scientific discourse, recapitulates the felt sense of an intimate interaction through its poetic style. Time and Intimacy is a book that can be opened anywhere and enjoyed, as it is composed of many loosely woven strands pulled together graphically and sometimes metaphorically. When it is opened spontaneously and absorbed in bursts, with full attention given to the language itself, it can be appreciated like poetry. Unlike poetry, however, Bennett's work has woven within it references to the latest research on close relationships. For readers who believe that the structure of the text should speak to the subject matter of that text, there is much experimentation with textual structure to be discovered in Time and Intimacy. Language alternates in unpredictable ways between the poetic and the philosophical, between the scientific and the transpersonal, between the objective and the subjective. Much as an intimate conversation itself might, the book invites the reader to transcend the ordinary boundaries of academic disciplines and to think about intimate experience in language that goes beyond ordinary discourse." —Karen Prager University of Texas, Dallas "This book delves deeply and reveals to the reader a rich and new way to look at the realm of relationships. Simultaneously exploring time and intimacy creates a profound shift in our understanding of how people relate. In a modern era that views time as a commodity, intimacy is often lost as relationship suffers. Joel Bennett provides a brilliant approach to a very important subject--well worth any reader's time." —Stephan Rechtschaffen, MD Author, Time Shifting: Creating More Time to Enjoy Your Life; Cofounder and CEO, "Bennett has done an extraordinary job of combining three forms of reflection to treat the topic of intimacy. The integration of three themes--quantitative psychology research, transpersonal depth psychology, and temporality/transcendence--constitutes the unique contribution of this book. Time and Intimacy: A New Science of Personal Relationships presents a hypothesis for further reflection in psychology, and it organizes a whole field of research for study. Most important, it deals sensitively with a very important topic." —Robert Cummings Neville Dean, School of Theology, Boston University